


you don't even know me (you're so sweet to try)

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 07:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4513266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes strangers can be of great comfort. (Two-part AU based on the prompt "What are you charged with?")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Word Count:** 1,720  
>  **Disclaimer:** These character's belong to Dan Harmon, etc., etc. I simply enjoy manipulating them.  
>  **Author's Note:** Thanks to the lovely [demandingbillydolls](http://demandingbillydolls.tumblr.com/) for prompting me and to the resplendent bethanyactually for being my beta. Internet friends rule.  
>  Just so no one's confused, Annie is still younger than Jeff in this alternate universe, but she's considerably less younger. I hope you enjoy.

Jeff hates the doctor’s office.

He supposes no one particularly _likes_ the doctor’s office, but his dislike is all-consuming. It’s something that causes him leg-jittering, hand-sweating, heart-fluttering, stomach-rumbling anxiety.

Even if he is just seeing a dermatologist.

His mom had been on his case since January about a mole that had appeared on his shoulder. Now, in late June, he's finally succumbing to her constant begging. ("I _told_ you your high-school obsession with tanning beds was going to bite you in the ass." "Don't you want to know if you have cancer?" "I have the right to know if you're dying so I can officially give up hope on grandchildren, Jeffrey!")

"I can help the next person in line." One of the receptionists—a woman with a pinched face who clearly does not want to be in a customer-service profession—snaps her fingers to get Jeff's attention, waving him over when he looks up. "How can I help you?" she asks in a bored voice when he approaches the counter.

Jeff clears his throat, but he can still feel a lump of panic lodged in there, making his mouth dry. "Winger for 2:30. I mean, I'm Jeff Winger. And I have an appointment with Dr. Simmons. At 2:30."

"Fine," she says, deadpan. The _click_ of her nails against the keyboard makes Jeff want to twitch like an irritated dog. "Insurance card?"

He fumbles with his wallet, and his hands are so slick that it takes him several attempts to slip the thin plastic card from its leather slot. He slides it over the counter without comment.

There's more _click_ -ing, and Jeff lets his gaze dart around the waiting room.

It's open and very white. Two big-screen TVs are mounted into the wall on either end, one playing a child’s cartoon and the other playing a talk show. There are a few people spread out in the rows of cream-colored seats.

One woman in particular catches his eye, sitting in the closest chair to the swinging door that nurses come out of to call you to your doom. She’s bent over a book, a sleek curtain of hickory hair shielding her face. She has delicate hands and a bright purple bag.

“There’s a thirty-five dollar copay,” the receptionist snaps, calling Jeff’s attention back to her.

He struggles to get a second card out of his wallet.

Once he’s all checked in, he chooses the seat across from the empty chair next to the nice girl with dark-roast coffee hair.

And it’s not because he wants to get a closer look at her, no sir. It’s because he can comfortably watch _The View_ from this seat, and squabbling middle-aged women make him feel like he's at his mom's house, thank you very much.

Whoopi Goldberg is yelling at the annoying blonde lady when she of the chocolate-bar hair crosses her legs, sitting back in her chair and flipping a page in her book. She’s reading an Agatha Christie novel.

She must feel him looking because she glances up, the hint of a smile on her face. Her eyes widen a little when she sees him, and her head snaps back down to her book, coral blooming over her cheeks.

She redefines his understanding of the color blue with a single glance.

Jeff tries to focus on a commercial for dish soap, repressing his inappropriate urge to keep staring, but, honestly, who's that cheery about doing dishes? The actor's strained smile makes Jeff's teeth ache in sympathy.

He pulls out his phone and leans forward, elbows resting on his knees and right leg bouncing.

He's letting his Twitter feed roll by without actually reading anything when a nurse comes out of the Doom Door. Jeff clenches his jaw so hard it pops.

"Robbie Newcomb," the nurse says and Jeff relaxes incrementally.

He starts up a game of Fruit Ninja, but gives up when his sweaty hands leave obstructing smudges on the screen.

When someone's cell starts ringing several moments later—a shrill imitation of an old rotary phone—Jeff jumps halfway out of his seat, dropping his own phone.

The woman with honey-on-burnt-toast hair leans down to retrieve it for him, a frown puckering her pretty pink lips. "It's cracked," she says regretfully. "You know, you really should have some kind of protective case on it. These things break easily."

Her voice has a know-it-all lilt that's both cute and annoying.

"I'll keep that in mind," Jeff mumbles as he takes back the phone.

She goes back to reading, tucking the shimmering sheet of her gingerbread hair behind her ear. (Why does he keep comparing women’s hair to food? Damn, he must be hungry. He tried to eat lunch an hour ago, but the smell of the soggy turkey sandwich he’d gotten on the go had only made his stomach churn worse.) Her nails are painted lime green.

"So," he tries after a stretch of silence, "What are you charged with?" She glances up at him, cocking an eyebrow. "No, I mean, what are you in for?" She tilts her head, her eyes dancing with concern and amusement. "Wait, that still makes it sound like I think we’re in prison, doesn't it? I swear I know the difference between a doctor's appointment and incarceration."

Amusement wins out, and she laughs—hearty and unintentionally loud. She has to stifle the sound by clasping a hand over her mouth.

"Great, well, now that I've made an ass of myself, I'm just going to…"

He gets up to move, but she gently catches his wrist. "I'm sorry," she smiles kindly at him. "You were just wound so tight, and I kinda had a bet going with myself about when you'd snap." She ducks her head, sheepish.

Jeff sits back down. "How do you bet against yourself?"

"By hoping my first prediction was right. There's very little payoff."

He feels his face relax into a smile. "So was your first prediction right?"

"No. I was waiting for a nurse to call your name.” She gestures to the Doom Door. “I figured that's when you’d lose it."

"There's still time for that to happen," he admits.

She shifts to the edge of her seat and leans over to place a warm hand on Jeff's knee. "Hey, you're going to be okay." She grins at him, wide and inviting and sincere. It makes his brain stutter.

"You have no way of knowing that," he says, though he's strangely soothed. "You don't even know my name." She quirks an expectant eyebrow until he adds, "Jeff."

She pats his knee and sits back. "Annie."

"Nice to meet you, Annie."

"Likewise." She slides a worn, highlighter-yellow index card into her book and angles her body toward him. "So, what are you charged with?"

Her blue, blue eyes sparkle, and she's clearly teasing him.

Jeff lets out a huffing laugh, and the ball of panic in his throat eases a little. "Mole. You?"

She winces. "Scar." His eyebrows shoot up, and he has to bite back the question that bubbles to his lips. Maybe she senses his curiosity or maybe she has practice diverting, but Annie's quick to steer the conversation in a different direction. "So what's with the Adrian Monk impression?"

"I'm not afraid of germs,” Jeff scoffs. “I just don't like to think about my mortality."

"Much healthier."

His smile drips off his face and he gets serious. “I don’t know what it is about doctors that freaks me out. Maybe it’s the smell. Maybe I’m 38 years old and I know something’s going to go wrong with my body eventually, and I’ve chosen the ignore-it-till-it-goes-away tactic.”

“The latter sounds more likely given its relative thoughtfulness.”

“Alright, Hercule Poirot, you figured me out.”

She smirks at him. “You noticed what book I was reading?”

“I may have noticed a lot more than that.”

The blush is back in her cheeks, and she glances away, flustered.

“I may have noticed back,” she says after a beat.

Jeff’s heart flutters and it has nothing to do with anxiety.

A nurse steps out into the waiting room from the Doom Door and calls, “Annie Edison.”

She gathers her things, shoving her book into her bag and shooting him an apologetic glance. Before she follows after the nurse, Annie places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, leaning in to whisper, “I didn’t think you were a day over 26.” Jeff snorts and she bounds away, pausing to turn and flash him a thumbs-up. “Good luck in there!”

The door swings shut behind her and Jeff slumps in his seat.

###

He emerges forty-five minutes later from the labyrinth of hallways that hides behind the swinging door with a clean bill of health.

He’s folding up his visit summary and not really paying attention to anything but the front entrance, so he almost misses her.

“Jeff!”

His head snaps around at the sound of his name, and he sees Annie Edison rushing after him, her feet slipping out of her flip-flops. When she catches up to where he’s standing her eyes get wide and bewildered, like she hadn’t planned this far and doesn’t know what’s supposed to come next.

“Did you wait for me?” Jeff asks, incredulous.

She picks at her nail polish. “I was…I don’t know. Worried, I guess. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“That’s so cute. Though I also have a sneaking suspicion you’re a serial killer now.”

She glances up at him from under long, dark lashes. “We could go get coffee so you can make up your mind about my status as a murderer.”

“That’s the weirdest pickup line I’ve ever heard,” he says.

“Is it the least effective pickup line you’ve ever heard?”

“Not by a long shot.”

“Excellent. I meant right now. Was that clear?”

Jeff grins and they fall into step on the walk out to the parking lot. “Where?”

“Cool Beans?”

“That’s the one on the community college campus?” Annie nods. “See you there.”

She bounces on the balls of her feet excitedly. “You can give me the lowdown on Mole-Gate.”

Jeff laughs and Annie hurries off to her car. He watches for a second before fumbling for his keys and jogging to the spot he parked his Lexus. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 1,320  
>  **Disclaimer:** These character's belong to Dan Harmon, etc., etc. I simply enjoy manipulating them.  
>  **Author's Note:** Thanks to the lovely [demandingbillydolls](http://demandingbillydolls.tumblr.com/) for prompting me and to the resplendent bethanyactually for being my beta. Internet friends rule.   
>  Just so no one's confused, Annie is still younger than Jeff in this alternate universe, but she's considerably less younger. I hope you enjoy.

Annie doesn't do this.

She doesn't invite strange, well-muscled men to get coffee with her.

Especially not strange, well-muscled men who clearly have more neuroses than she does. Relationships can only handle so much neurotic; she knows from experience.

_Whoa there. Relationship?_

Annie slows to a stop at a red light, taking a deep breath. Something about this man—Jeff—has her spiraling out of control. It's like she's in a cartoon wherein Jeff is a crafty desert bird that's led her, unwitting, over the edge of a cliff.

Now she's in freefall.

Someone behind her honks, and Annie's head snaps up to find the light's turned green.

She should turn around. Head home to her apartment and her dissertation and her regularly-scheduled life. Forget this uncharacteristic lapse in judgement.

Instead, she pulls into the lot outside the student union.

She paces outside, still not sure if she’s really going through with this and giving herself the option of getting back in her car and driving off.

Jeff emerges from a shiny black car a few minutes later, and Annie stills. She nervously smooths down her hair.

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asks, teasing, as he approaches.

She smiles, tension dissipating. “You do look awfully familiar.”

He smiles back and gestures to the entrance. “Shall we?”

Annie nods and they walk into the building. Since it’s summer, the student union is uncrowded. The design of the front room and adjacent cafeteria is such that each wall is mostly made of expansive windows. Late-afternoon June sun beats down and fills the airy space with pleasantly bright light.

Cool Beans is tucked in the corner, a varnished wood wall that just comes up to Annie’s shoulders surrounding the establishment. The nook just past the counter houses several cozy booths.

Jeff orders himself a butter croissant and black medium coffee to which he only adds a packet of raw cane sugar before picking a booth.

Large iced mocha in hand, Annie slides onto the bench opposite Jeff.

“So.” He eyes her.

“Your mole,” she prompts.

“Ah, yes.” He nods gratefully. “Nothing to worry about. I’m cancer-free.”

“Good to know. I was obsessed with _A Walk to Remember_ when I was a kid, but—strangely enough—the romance faded as I became an adult.”

Jeff smirks. “I don’t even know where to begin. Wait, that’s a lie. Am I Mandy Moore in this scenario? Because I would much rather be Joseph Gordon-Levitt in _50/50_.”

Annie considers this. “I suppose that’s acceptable.”

Their conversation settles into a natural lull, and she can tell he wants to ask about her appointment. She’s thankful that he holds back. “Tell me about yourself in five words.”

He smirks before taking a sip of his coffee and holding up one large hand to tick off the words on his fingers. “Witty, lawyer, connoisseur, cynical, and…” his mouth scrunches in thought, “insecure. You?”

“Organized, optimist, forensic scientist, dissertation.”

He grins at her, and Annie feels a tingle of excitement. He has a nice smile. “I noticed that you didn’t say murderer.”

“How keenly observant of you.”

“I’m still going to have to gather more data before I come to a conclusion, of course, but I find that very promising.”

She plays with her straw before glancing up at him from under her eyelashes. He’s watching her with interest and smiles when he catches her eye.

“What do you need to know?"

###

They’re still talking when the sun is hanging low in the sky and Cool Beans is flooded with magical golden light.

Annie knows a lot about Jeff now. She knows his father left when he was a kid (though he was twitchy about providing more detail than that). She knows he’s allergic to cats and really loves his mom and got kicked out of school in Denver for plagiarizing a term paper before moving to Greendale to start over. She knows how much he can bench press. She knows he’s afraid of doctors and heights.

In turn, she tells him about her snobby mother and infuriatingly stoic father. She tells him she once auditioned for a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show on a dare and got the part of Magenta. She tells him she decided to be a detective when she was 12, determined to become the female Sherlock. She tells him about the lab where she works and her shabby apartment.

“So, okay, before we go, I have to ask,” Jeff says after a barista asks them for the third time to wrap it up. “Will you tell me about this mysterious scar?”

Annie grimaces. But he’s done such an admirable job of bottling his curiosity and she feels like maybe it’s only fair.

“There’s kind of a lengthy backstory.”

Jeff glances over at the counter and Annie looks, too. The barista is glaring at them.

“Is there a Cliff Notes version?”

She sighs. “So, I was in love with—well, _infatuated with_ is probably more accurate—this guy all through high school.”

“Not the lead-in I was expecting.”

Annie shushes him and continues. “We were best friends and went to the same university after high school. He met this other guy in a club for this TV show they both like, Inspector Spacetime. Anyway, they hit it off big time. They have this room at their place where they ‘render alternate realities’ or something—they call it the Dreamatorium.”

“They play pretend?”

“It’s really not as weird as it sounds. You’d understand if you met them. So, as I was saying, they’re…quirky. They saw this video online about how you can make fire different colors at home, and they asked me if I could show them how. So I took home a Bunsen burner with me. To make a long story short, I got distracted when I found out their relationship had progressed and there was a _tiny_ explosion.”

Jeff’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

“Come on,” the barista whines. “We closed, like, twenty minutes ago.”

“We should probably...” Annie says.

“Yeah,” Jeff agrees.

They gather their cups off the table and walk outside. The sun has just set and the world is dusky. The building is lined with red, white, and blue lights for Fourth of July, and Jeff and Annie are dimly illuminated.

“Today has felt like a total out-of-body experience,” Annie says, looking at her feet. “I’ve never done this before.”

“You’ve never gotten coffee with a guy before?”

She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. I’ve never comforted anxious strangers or cared about their moles.” Jeff snorts. “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and I’m not going to be sure this actually happened.”

He nods thoughtfully. “I know what you mean. I’ve never been lured to get coffee by a possible murderer.” She shakes her head at him, smiling. “So…will we see each other again?”

Her head spins and she looks up at him. It makes her heart thump. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Well, I’m _pretty sure_ self-described optimists don’t murder people, especially beautiful, self-described optimists.”

“That’s a logical fallacy,” Annie points out, feeling heat rise to her cheeks.

He laughs. “Well, I’ll take my chances anyway. Shall we trade contact information?”

She can’t suppress her grin as she digs her phone out of her purse, handing it to him. He trades it for his own.

They linger after their numbers are successfully programmed.

Annie shuffles a little closer to him. Jeff clears his throat.

“Since we’re already doing things we don’t normally do, how about a kiss goodbye?”

“That is the lamest line I have ever heard.” She manages to sound collected and snarky despite the fact that her heart has leapt into her throat.

“Was it the least effective?”

God, he’s cute.

“Not by a long shot.”

He leans down and Annie stands on her tip-toes to meet him halfway.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] you don't even know me (you're so sweet to try)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6345688) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




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